Chapter 3: Interrogation

November 13

Laina stood just outside the streetlamp's reach, tapping her foot impatiently against the asphalt. Her back faced the Pokemon Center, a beacon of light in the otherwise opaque night. She shot another nervous glance toward the inside of the clinic, squinting in desperation in search for the trainers who had the egg. A sigh of relief escaped her when she saw their backs turned to the entrance. "This'll be easy," she thought. "Now there's no reason for Jasper to get all pissy."

She assessed the main floor's layout, analyzing every walkway, couch, trainer, and pokémon inside. Her eyes fell on the raven-haired boy, who sat on the edge of a row of seats. His arms looked stocky, but not stocky enough to where he'd be able to put up a fight. "The girl next to him doesn't look all that strong, either. His Pikachu might be a problem, and so will that other trainer, but they'll all have the darkness against them."

The plan, as simplistic as it seemed, ran through her head without pause. She could've recited it backward while solving a Rubik's Cube by the time she dialed Jasper's number on her cellphone.

His voice sounded after just one ring. "I kept the phone near me, for when you called," he rambled. "You there yet?"

"Yeah, I'm just waiting on Skylar. Is she all set?"

"Affirmative. But there's something else, though," Jasper said. "She did some research and found that all of the Pokémon Centers in Sinnoh run on some special foreign generator. She isn't able to tap into it, for some reason."

Laina groaned. "What does this mean, exactly?"

"We'll still be able to shut them down, but not for long. Whatever you're gonna do in there, you gotta do it quickly." He paused. "I'd guess ninety seconds, depending on how long it takes the nurses in there to restore the generator. It's not worth the extra effort to try and destroy it."

"Great," mumbled Laina. "That just makes a job that I don't wanna do even harder!"

Jasper ignored her sarcasm. "It's seven thirty now, and Skylar wired the grids to blink out at seven thirty-five. Wait outside the door of the clinic, and make sure that your truck isn't waiting too far away, either."

Laina said nothing and hung up the phone, scratching the side of her head in hopes of mentally preparing herself. Her watch read seven thirty-three. At the end of the block, Laina saw an unassuming, dully white station wagon parked illegally. A man could be seen in the side mirror. She nodded to him, and he did the same.

Wringing her hands did nothing to stop the anxiety from setting in. A pair of night vision goggles, designed by Skylar for operations like these, was tucked under her armpit. An oblong Sleeping Syringe stuck out in her pocket.

The minute hand on her watch seemed to reverberate as it inched toward the next dash on the watch. Six thirty-four. "Oh shit," she thought to herself, "this is it! What's gonna happen if I mess up again? The kid could get away, or-"

A deep, looming sensation of worry overcame her suddenly. She glanced at her watch again; six thirty-five. "Is Skylar late? No, she can't be! Was the operation called off?" She began to pace back and forth frantically, attracting the attention of a choice few late-night pedestrians. Beads of cold sweat trickled down her face, dripping methodically onto her jacket.

"That's it, I'm calling Jasper."

Before she could dig out her phone, complete and utter darkness enveloped her whole. Panic and confusion set in around her almost immediately. She could hear screams of fright pierce the night, and people clamored about her, trying to guide themselves around. With a deep breath, Laina fumbled the night vision goggles over her head and, with Sleeping Syringe in hand, burst into the doors of the Pokemon Center.

Ash scarfed his plate of spaghetti and meatballs in silence, listening to Dawn and Brock talk about breeding techniques or something. A nurse walked past him, accidently brushing against the sleeping Pikachu's back.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Ash cajoled, brimming with excitement and anticipation over the egg.

The nurse turned to face Ash, jamming a note pad into her pocket. "Yes?"

Before Ash could ask about the egg, all of the lights in the room blinked out, as did all of the streetlights. A mild panic broke out, consisting of a few screams and breaking glass. Ash felt Pikachu stir awake amongst the flurry of murmurs that underlined the dying shouts. A hand nudged the corner of his lip.

"The heck's your deal?" Ash said.

"Sorry," Brock's voice answered. He raised his voice over the panic. "I'm just trying to feel around for you guys. Here, let me get my-"

All of Pikachu's weight on Ash's shoulder allayed itself suddenly. The suddenness of it didn't imply that he jumped off willingly. He heard a loud thud on the wall to his left, and a sharp, jolting cry of pain struck Ash's ears.

"Pikachu?" he called out frantically.

A stabbing pain shot through his neck. He gasped in pain, but it could hardly be heard over the clamoring of the nurses and patrons in the clinic. He reached behind him and yanked from his neck a small syringe which, even in the dark, glowed bright neon orange.

"Guys, something's wr-"Ash trembled, but a jabbing sensation in his gut knocked the wind out of him. Falling to the ground, he felt confused trainers and pokémon stumble over him, bruising him in the face and chest.

Swallowing his pain, he got up and swung wildly, hoping to hit whoever was attacking him. A dull ache shook his fist when it made contact with someone's jaw. Another jabbing in his leg, almost like someone drove a knife through it, brought him down once more.

Again, he tried to get up, but a foggy, woozy cloud in his head kept him down. Dawn's body covered him, but got off just as fast. The weariness that slowly spread down Ash's spine felt too contrived to be natural. Someone had to be drugging him.

A pair of hands began to lift him up. These were too slender to be Brock's, too large for Dawn's. Ash swung into the air with renewed vigor, but his arm felt like lead. He couldn't even lift it when he tried to throw a third punch.

He could hear the others shouting hysterically for him, but even that was fading fast. His limping body couldn't resist any longer against his presumed captor, and he could only watch through heavy eyelids as he was dragged out of the building.

"D-D-Daw…" he stammered, but he couldn't force a cohesive word from his mouth. A beefier pair of hands jerked his arms behind his back and wrapped a thick coil of wire around them.

"The…the egg-" he thought. "Th-they want…"

His body flew into the air for a split second before landing hard on a metal surface, his face breaking the fall. Blood trickled from his nose and into his mouth, quelled only by the burlap sack that now covered his head. He got up in a last-ditch effort at escape, but a foot rammed his bottom, forcing him to the ground as he blacked out.

Dawn felt around in the darkness for Ash frantically. She could feel the worry turning to anxiety, the anxiety turning to adrenaline-fueled fear in a matter of seconds. "Ash!" she shrieked. "If this is some joke, you're-"

"Pikachu!" Brock interjected. "What happened? Ash?"

Light blasted at their pupils with unmerciful pain. They shielded their eyes from the restored lights, whipping their heads around frantically. Couches and end tables lay overturned, and trainers ran around to reunite with their friends, or their pokémon, some of whom sustained injuries.

"Pikachu!" Brock ran over to the wall on his left, where an unmoving Pikachu lay. Fearing the worst, Dawn followed him, tripping over a vase and cutting her hand.

The pokémon breathed, but shallow and broken. A large bruise throbbed from his back.

"You alright, buddy?" Dawn coaxed.

He nodded curtly. "Chu…" he moaned.

"We need a nurse!" Brock shouted. Judging by the chaos that had yet to subside, he knew that he wouldn't get one. Pikachu sat up without warning, scanning the room for his trainer.

"Oh shit," Dawn breathed. "Where's-"

"Ash?" Brock called. "Ash, what's happened?"

He only heard silence amongst the chaos.

Ash regained his conscience gradually. At first it was nothing but a mere state of self-awareness; he felt that he existed, but nothing beyond that. The coarse burlap sack slipped off of his head when the man threw him from the truck and onto hard, cold pavement. He blacked out again when they – a woman and her partner – dragged him up a cemented staircase. If he hadn't slammed his head so hard on those stairs, he would've stayed conscious.

It wasn't until he lay on his knees that he woke for good. Instantly, he stood up in a panic…or tried to, at least. His arms were outstretched, chained to the wall behind him. Even the lights off, he could make out the simple, four-walled room. A blinded window, a door opposite him. Nothing else.

He licked his upper lip tensely, tasting the dried blood caked under his nose. The chains that pinned his arms rattled with any and every movement he made, piercing Ash's ears with twinges of helplessness.

In an impromptu burst of energy, he surged his arms forward, but the chains held taut. Minutes of this went by before Ash hung his head in exhaustion.

"-we gonna do about-"

Ash's eyes darted toward the door, craning his ear as best as he could toward the voices. Two of them, a trebled male and a flat female's, grew louder with each footstep. The terror and adrenaline flooded in Ash, freezing his limbs like icicles.

Two silhouettes walked through the door, silencing themselves as they closed it behind them. The three of them stood in the darkness, staring each other down with fear or concentration.

"Who are you and what are you-"Ash hissed, but a foot to his jaw cut him off. He cried out in agony, but he fell silent when a pair of delicate hands, the same ones from the Pokémon Center, jerked his face toward the window. Someone, probably the woman's partner, opened the blinds, unleashing the daytime sun into Ash's eyes.

"Listen up you little shit, and listen well," the woman said, pressing a decidedly sharp knife against Ash's neck. The voice sounded feminine, but its innocent, sultry tone caused Ash to squirm in place. "You see what's out that window? Hearthome, as you call it? It'll be ours soon. It'll be decimated, just like the rest of Sinnoh. Innocent lives will be lost, thousands of them. Unless…"

The lights in the room turned on, and the other man shuttered the blinds closed. "Unless you give us the egg," she finished. The woman let go of Ash's face and pocketed her knife. Ash looked up to see his captor, which looked like the girl that ran away from the Center before the blackout. He could see the defined cheek bones, the young look about her. She couldn't have looked more than two years older than he was.

Both the girl and the man wore dull grey jumpsuits, each sporting a bright red "R" on their chest. The man wore a flat-front cap on his head, while the woman didn't have anything to hold back her long brown hair.

"Team Rocket?" he thought frantically, tugging at his chains once more. "Why are they in Sinnoh?"

"There's no way in hell I'm telling you anything!" Ash growled. His mouth seeped with blood from the kick to his jaw, but his body filled with defiance at these people. He spat the mouthful of blood at the girl's feet, and he grinned when it landed with a splat on the toe of her shoe.

"Get the bucket," she murmured. The man wordlessly strode from the apartment while she leaned against the wall, breathing deeply. The grunt emerged two seconds later, holding a pale metal bucket by its thin handle.

Ash heard the cool water splashing inside before he saw it. He struggled with his chains futilely before the man yanked Ash by the hair and shoved his head under the surface.

The jolt of the ice-cold water caught Ash off guard. He thrashed about madly, trying his best to worm his way back into fresh air, but the grunt held him under. The water took on a crimson hue from Ash's gushing blood, stinging the boy's eyes. His lungs burned with increasing intensity the longer he floundered.

Seconds in the bucket turned into minutes as Ash fought for an out from him imminent death, but none came. His throat felt like it might implode before a gasp of air relieved him. He didn't even notice the man remove the bucket from under him; Ash focused on savoring the air, like a baby escaping from a mother's womb.

Through the water that clouded his eyes, Ash could see Laina, standing by the door, watching the grunt poke at him.

"Ready to talk, sweetums?" she said, her voice tauntingly sweet.

Ash didn't have to think about that. "Go to hell!"

Her foot swung madly into Ash's gut, keeling him over once more. He couldn't feel the pain, though, for he felt a rushing feeling begin to overtake him. His eardrums pounded as if waves crashed into it, but everything was blocked out when his head went into the bucket again.

He couldn't feel the water against his skin, or the mounting pressure on his lungs. The supernatural flow of energy that flowed through him negated everything else, and he felt himself go limp.

When he opened his eyes, a group of dark fighter jets soared over a deep blue ocean. Painted on the fins of each plane were bright red "R"'s, the same one on his captors' jumpsuits. They flew at an almost supersonic speed, tearing through the clouds like they were shreds of paper.

"But…but why are they flying at all?" Ash said to himself. "What business do they have outside of Kanto, if anywhere?"

Almost on cue, the vision rotated in an about-face, like a movie shot. What Ash saw next made him reel. The façade of Mount Coronet loomed in the distance, and the pilots in the jets flew straight for its apex.

The surreal reality settled in Ash like a rock settled in a river bed. "They're coming for the whole region," he realized. "Why else would fighter jets armed to the brim with weapons fly at full speed towards us?"

"But has this…has this already happened? I was out all night, anything could have happened since then!"

A violent electrical shock in his abdomen spurred him back to reality. He found himself in the same dingy apartment, in the same chains that pinned him to the wall. The man thrust the end of a Magnemite into Ash's stomach, shocking him once more.

"Was that... was that my aura?" Ash thought. He blinked at the ground in shock. Why here? Why now?

"C'mon sweetums, you'll have to talk some time!"

Ash looked his female captor in the eye. "Why would I ever tell you where that egg is?"

She sighed. "It's simple, kid. We can keep this up until you die of your injuries, or you can spill the beans and walk away in one piece."

"But if you're about to take over the region, then why would I wanna walk away in the first place?"

It's not up to me as to whether or not you wanna live," Laina said nonchalantly. "We'd rather have you give us the information before you die, if you die."

"She's right," Ash thought. "If those fighter jets were a sign of anything, it's gonna be rough if I make it out of this alive. But I…I can't just let Team Rocket get to that egg. Even if I die, who knows what they'd do with it…"

"But then there's Dawn, and Brock. Pikachu…"

Ash stared her down with an evil eye. "Alright. Fine," he sighed. "You win. I've had the egg shipped to Mount Coronet. There's a safe in-"

The woman's firm, bony hand seized Ash by the neck. "Don't you dare lie to me!" she hissed. "You've just gotten yourself into deeper shit now!"

A violent slap struck across Ash's face, but he restrained his cry of pain. He couldn't help but smile when the man shouted in frustration and stomped out of the room, with the female following suit.

"This kid isn't gonna last much longer without either cracking or getting himself killed," said Laina. Her partner only shrugged as she dug her cell phone out of her pocket.

"Hey, whataya doin'?" he asked.

"I'm calling Jasper for help," Laina sighed. "This kid is too much of a pushover for-"

Her eyes grew wide suddenly, and she frantically patted herself down before cursing. "I left my damn wallet back at that clinic!" she hissed.

The man stood by and took Laina's obscenities before she called for Jasper.

He answered almost immediately. "What did you find out from the kid? Did he tell you where the egg is?"

"No, I couldn't get him to break. He's really gunning to keep it under wraps. I lost it when he fed me false information.

"Damnit, Laina!" Jasper shouted. Laina held her phone half a foot from her ear. "We need to find out where that egg is now! Get that kid to Jubilife. We'll have more…effective methods of extracting the truth from him there."

"Yes, sir," Laina sighed in exasperation. "Anything else that you want me to do, while I'm at it?"

"Just be quick in getting there. Like, really quick."

She frowned. "Why?"

"Because," said Jasper. "The invasion has begun."

Laina looked to the skies and saw that he was right.